Lord, help us to contextualize the gospel in a way that transcends our cultural moment. But regardless of how good or bad we are at this, let us never stop singing these words as those who aren’t ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

These are our two responsibilities before God on this Inauguration day.

An hour from now, Barack Obama will be President of the United States. We have much to be thankful for in a peaceful transition of power. As history can testify, humans are capable of dramatic and dangerous changes in power. But while the ordering of this “change” is peaceful, underneath the surface of today’s events is a terrible violence. It is ironic that President Elect Obama, an icon of human and civil justice as the first African American president, is also a champion of injustice against the unborn members of our race. This is an irony famous to all of us who are both made in God’s image but who are fallen sinners in rebellion against our Creator.

Our nations sickness in its approval of abortion, I pray, will be an embarrassment of our nation’s history. Today, of all days, is a reminder that we can change our mind. Today is a reminder that we are capable of embarrassment over our own nation’s history.

The following two links express well the heart of and concern of those who know and follow Christ. Let us engage as citizens with the clarity and spirit of this letter, and let us pray with the fervency, theological conviction and creaturely-dependence of this prayer.

An open letter from Ron Jones, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church, just blocks from the White House.

A prayer for Obama by Dr. Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Today, President Elect Obama sing the words ofGod, Our Help in Ages Past, in the tradition initiated by President Roosevelt in 1941. These words will help facilitate our own prayers for our president and our nation.

O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defence is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.

Thy Word commands our flesh to dust,
Return, ye sons of men:
All nations rose from earth at first,
And turn to earth again.

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by the flood,
And lost in following years.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

Like flowery fields the nations stand
Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower’s hand
Lie withering ere ‘tis night.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

According to New York News, police are searching a garbage dump in New Jersey for a baby that was thrown out with the trash. According to his mother, Basher Moyd passed away twenty minutes after he was born. The Hospital stays that the baby was stillborn.

Twenty minutes. What’s the difference? The difference, under New Jersey law, is whether or not this baby was a person or not. If the child was born alive, then he is a person. If the child was stillborn, then he is not a person.

The story does not play out the entailments of the personhood of the baby. I take it that there is a significantly greater interest for the state and the hospital in the discovery of the child if he was stillborn.

Personhood, in the context of the law, indicates the moral significance of a humanbeing. In the eyes of New Jersey law, human beings become important and gain dignity and rights as persons when they leave the womb. In this case, personhood is determined by environment and degree of dependency. Of course, the child is far from independent when he leaves the womb.

I don’t think the mother would recognize that distinction whether her son was stillborn or not.